Big Data Analytics and Its Impact on the Supply Chain

CIO Review published a byline by Russell Reynolds Associates' Pascal Becotte​, on "Big Data Analytics and Its Impact on the Supply Chain." The following is an excerpt of the article.

Supply chain executives have often led the market in the adoption of technology. Today’s expanding proliferation of data, on everything from material flows to customer preferences, is rapidly changing the way companies do business and highlighting a powerful need for enhanced data management and analytics. The benefits of big data analytics, referring to large and complex datasets, are clear: Big data can revolutionize the way organizations work, creating substantial differences in efficiency, costs, visibility and customer satisfaction. Big data comes from a wide range of sources:

-Today’s technologies and social platforms allow businesses to get direct customer feedback in the form of ratings, reviews and blog comments.

-Data from mobile, social platforms and e-commerce are being integrated with data from enterprise systems.

-Manufacturing is changing from event-based planning to real-time sensing with the introduction of the Internet of Things and machine-to-machine communication.

Data has grown—in volume, in variety and in velocity—and can bring tremendous value if exploited in the right way.

Organizations already are driving productivity along the entire length of the enterprise supply chain, but the use of big data analytics in the supply chain function is not widespread or well-coordinated across global companies according to research. The companies that do benefit from big data analytics have three commonalities: They have a strong enterprise-wide analytics strategy, they embed big data analytics in supply chain operations and they have the right talent pool to produce actionable insights from big data.

There is a need to hire, train and enable leaders who can help a business benefit from big data analytics. The majority of companies are not yet well-positioned from a human capital standpoint to embrace digital supply chain transformation. We analyzed the profiles of more than 50 senior supply chain executives across a range of industries to see how well-positioned they are for the digitization of the supply chain. An overwhelming majority of executives in companies across disparate industries are lacking when it comes to their position on what might be termed the “digital preparedness continuum.”